In 1894, historian Theodor Mommsen wrote that the root cause of the anti-Semitic ‘affliction’ was ‘envy and the basest instincts,… a barbaric hatred … - Götz Aly

By exploiting material wealth confiscated and plundered in a racial war, Hitler’s National Socialism achieved an unprecedented level of economic equality and created vast new opportunities for upward mobility for the German people.

Namely, how did National Socialism, an obviously deceitful, megalomaniacal, and criminal undertaking, succeed in persuading the great majority of the German people that it was working in their interest? One answer is that as harshly as the Nazi leadership applied its racist ideology to Jews, the handicapped, and other ‘undesirables,’ their domestic policies were remarkably friendly toward the German lower classes, soaking the wealthy and redistributing the burdens of wartime to the benefit of the underprivileged.

[A]1942 levy required property owners to pay ten years of the tax in advanced in a single lump sum. Because property owners were prohibited from raising rents, they alone bore the burden. In addition, the Reich appropriated other revenues that had previously belonged to local authorities.All told the state collected the considerable sum of 8.1 billion reichsmarks (in today’s currency the equivalent of around 100 billion dollars) in additional revenues in 1942-43. The financial newspaper Bankwirtschaft hailed the windfall as ‘a satisfactory result in terms of both limiting consumer spending power and improving the state budget.